Endings and beginnings...

What happens when you chain yourself to your desk for a whole month in a desperate attempt to get your thesis written? Well, a thesis, apparently. That and a lot of coffee drinking, which of course aided the cause. I have completed the thirty one days of concentrated writing which I dubbed Thesis Month with three chapters (an introduction, one on DeLillo's Falling Man and one on Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist) which total around 22,000 words, 16,000 of which were written in the last month alone. I still have one more chapter (on McEwan's Saturday) plus a conclusion and all of the suggested revisions from my supervisors to write over the next 20 days but the end is in sight and it looks like it is going to be possible.

This thesis will be, by far, the longest single piece of writing I have ever done. Normally I churn out blog posts or articles that are 1,200 words in length without too much difficulty but despite my love of writing, there has always been this weird mental barrier in my head when it comes to writing anything very much longer. Especially something with chapters. Locking myself away for a month has made me realise, though, that what all of the best writers have said is true: Writing is work and you just have to keep showing up at your desk every day until you get it done. Previously I had tended to be one of those "write when inspiration hits" types which, you can imagine really doesn't work so well when there are strict deadlines and academic penalties involved. Anyway, two more months and this thing will be submitted and I will be free of tertiary study for the first time in 12 years! The possibilities of what I will do with the extra time are endless including reading what I want, whenever I want, purely for the hell of it. Heaven is just around the corner.

In other news, I have been given an exciting new job. The place where I work, The Community Services Center in Taipei, has an English language lifestyle magazine aimed at the international community living in Taipei and beyond. Recently, the editor who had been doing a fabulous job of looking after this magazine decided that she was going to step down and to my absolute joy my boss asked me if I would like to consider doing it. Of course I accepted, joyfully and with many fist-pumps. I have just started work on my first issue due out in February. Yet another reason to get this thesis done and dusted so I can focus my attentions on this new project, also known as My Dream Job.

Once I have got the thesis out of the way I will be spending some time thinking about the direction I want to take this blog in and being more committed to writing it on a regular basis. I have been having a few thoughts about what kinds of books I want to spend my time reading and also thoughts about how much Taiwan I want to include here. But I want to finalise one commitment before I take on another to ensure that both get the love and attention they need. It's almost like I can't really and truly celebrate the new year until I finish the thesis because I can't make new goals and resolutions until I have. But that's OK - it just gives me another reason to pop a cork on a bottle of something a bit special at the end of the February!

I hope you're all well and have had a wonderful Festive Season with your loved ones and that 2012 will be a fantastic year for you. Also I want to thank you for bearing with me during this period of blogging silence - I even gained a few new followers which I am most grateful for. Happy New Year!

A non-literary post

It's a funny thing that the end of the year does to us all. All of a sudden there is this mad impulse to try and condense it, make a 'best of' list out of it, make some sense of another year that has, by all accounts, rocketed by while we were standing agog wondering how time got to moving by so fast.

So here we are again: December 2009, not only the end of the year but the end of another decade - the so-called "Noughties". Lord knows what we're supposed to call the next one, but I guess we have time to figure that out. This decade was a particularly significant one for me as it saw me moving from being a teenager to an adult. Ten years ago I had just finished my sixth form year at high school in New Zealand, I wanted to be a doctor and I had a huge crush on some guy in my Chemistry class. Ten years later, I've just gotten married (not to the guy in my Chemistry class!), moved countries and embarked on the career I've come to realise is my true passion: books and everything to do with them. It's a cliche, I know, but it really is amazing how much difference 10 years can make but also how quickly it passes us by.

In any case, what I really wanted to say was I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful new year. Look forward to seeing you back here in 2010!

The beginning of a beautiful friendship??

A wise person once said to me: if you want to write, just do it.

And so here I am, writing. Who will read this? Who will care about my meandering musings about my existence? I guess time will tell.

The main thing about blogs, I am told, is to make sure you update them regularly. I will try my absolute best even if it is only for the purpose of me writing something on a regular basis. I'm not sure where (if anywhere) this is going to take me, but hey!! You only live once. You may as well blog at least once, right?

Someone please say "right".